SOURCE: "The Cyclic Form of Laughable Loves," in Milan Kundera and the Art of Fiction, edited by Aron Aji, Garland Publishing Inc., 1992, pp. 132-52.

In the following essay, Carroll considers Laughable Loves as a short story cycle, in which awareness of the interrelationship of the stories is essential for a full understanding of each individual narrative and the collection as a whole.

The fiction of Milan Kundera has inspired an avalanche of critical attention in recent years; in fact, as we come to realize the importance of his work, Kundera studies are becoming, as this volume evidences, something of a "growth industry." The works that have attracted the greatest critical attention are his most recent (and most fully realized) offerings: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. However, in order to understand Kundera's work as a whole, we must turn back to his...